Revision of Community legislation on the Inland transport of
dangerous goods

The European Commission has included in its Work
Programme 2006 a proposal in the area of the transport of dangerous
goods. It is recalled that at present the European rules on
dangerous goods transport cover road and rail transport modes; the
rules can be found in four pieces of Community legislation, namely
Directives 94/55/EC (road), 96/49/EC (rail), 96/35/EC and 2000/18/EC
(safety advisers) respectively. Substantial elements of the road and
rail directives are international rules (so called ADR and RID),
which are based on a model developed by the United Nations:
“Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods; Model
regulations”, last amended in 2005. The UN model aims at creating,
whenever possible, identical rules for all transport modes.

Road and rail directives have been amended a
number of times so as to ensure that they remain in line with
international rules. Inevitably developments over time have rendered
a number of clauses redundant (like directives on safety advisers)
or obsolete. The Commission’s intention is to propose to take such
clauses off the Community legislation.

Another intention is to propose to merge the
current rules on dangerous goods transport by road and rail into one
piece of Community legislation. The Commission believes that this
would avoid duplication, make application of the rules by operators
easier and allow the public to gain of clearer picture of existing
rules.

The third element of the Commission’s initiative
is intended to be an extension of Community legislation to include
the international rules on dangerous goods transport by inland
waterways (so called ADN), which are also based on the UN model. The
Commission believes that such extension would be a logical
supplement to Community legislation, in order to create a set of
uniformly applied rules for all inland transport modes in the
territory of the European Union.